


Lover, Soldier

by jonsis



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: The First Avenger, M/M, War, War Era, i wrote gay fanfic for school lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-22 23:38:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10707540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonsis/pseuds/jonsis
Summary: bucky's deployed. the one light in his life keeps him fighting.





	Lover, Soldier

**Author's Note:**

> a really short thing i wrote for school a few years back, so it's been written under weird assessment requirements. uploading for reference and easy links.

The rain was relentless. It turned blue skies to a bleak, wretched grey. The soldiers too, had once smiled like the sun, proud to be serving their country. Now, they could only see bullets in their future, striking through their body and leaving them to fall as a dead weight. Their fate had already been decided: six feet under in a wooden box. The mud, they had soon discovered, was not something to be reckoned with. It would fill every hole in every soldier’s boot. It wasn’t long before their boots were as heavy as their hearts. Each step was already a struggle without the extra burden of the mud trying to hold them down. No one could evade it. Not when the trenches were their prison. For some, serving their country was a crime punishable by death.  

Most men had girls back home, those who would wait endlessly for the boys to return. Names went along with the pictures tucked into the crevices of helmets. Tracy, Sarah, Marie. _Steve_. It was the name that matched the photo tucked into the pocket against one man’s chest. There had been blushes and odd smiles exchanged when that photograph had been passed to him. “Something to remember me by, right, Buck?” was all that had been said, as if he could be so easily forgotten.

His hair had once been neat, cropped at the sides and combed back like any good soldier’s was. It had been dark before war, and now it was even darker still. It had been stained by the mud that caught him when he fell, plastering it to the sides of his face. It had always been difficult to keep clean when the rain refused to cease, a vicious and perpetual force of nature. The uniform, too, had long ago been immaculate. Back in New York, when he had been savouring one last dance, it had been worn with pride. It meant hope for him and everyone who saw it. Now, after his cap had been replaced with a helmet, and his sleeves stained with the blood of other men, it painted a target on his back.

Making it through the battlefield didn’t always mean he had survived. Memories were the ghosts of his past. They followed. They haunted. In sleep, they returned, reducing dreams to nightmares and morphing snores into screams.  Sleep had once been a comfort, but was now something to be avoided. The posters had promised pride, promised them that they would be a hero. Not being able to sleep through the night had never been anyone’s idea of heroism.

If he had once been asked what his worst experience was, it wouldn’t be this. It would have been getting turned down by Connie Stevens when he had scarcely turned nineteen. America had not yet joined the war. It seemed distant, something that did not need to be worried about. Not having to volunteer would be a blessing. He had to take care of Steve, a boy so sickly he would never be able to fight. That was the most he could ever ask for. The anguish of seeing his comrades fall to their knees with a bullet through their skull was a daily ritual. As long as Steve was never one of those, as long as Steve was _safe,_ he would fight for as long as he was needed.


End file.
